06 May 2008

Here's an intriguing thought on why JPM bought Bear, because it had to. The idea makes sense when you consider that JP's credit exposure to capital ratio hovers around 50%, a lot of which is in derivatives, which is quite high compared to its peers.

For some, it follows that Bear was most likely a big counterparty to all this exposure. "They would have had to step in to avoid a Bear bankruptcy so that they would not be forced to take toxic assets back onto their own balance sheet and avoid massive writedowns. Were JP's exposure to Bear large enough, then JP Morgan itself could have been left significantly impaired." An interesting theory nonetheless.